A Revitalized CGIAR Approved – a Message from Katherine Sierra, CGIAR Chair

AGM08 marked a historic moment for the CGIAR. The CGIAR Members adopted the proposal for a revitalized CGIAR, ushering in a new era for our work together. After a year of intensive effort to find the best way to transform the CGIAR into a new and more effective organization, we reached agreement on the way [...]

Beyond AGM08…

Stephen Hall, WorldFish DG and incoming Alliance Chair, sums up Change Initiative discussions from AGM08 and looks to the year ahead:

The ILAC initiative

The CGIAR’s Institutional Learning and Change (ILAC) Initiative was set up five years ago to address the major challenge that successful poverty-reducing research options are often not widely applied or adopted. ILAC is already addressing many of the issues raised by the Change Management Initiative, as it is improving people’s capacity to work with a [...]

A donor perspective

Debbie Player, representing the New Zealand Agency for International Development (NZAID), believes that sorting out funding issues is pivotal to achieving greater impact. She points out that, while the specific objectives and mission of the revitalized CGIAR are clear and have been accepted by all, donors may be getting mixed messages about the future role [...]

A forum for young scientists

New ways of working in a revitalized CGIAR call for new skills, particularly in communication and networking, says Bala Ramani, Coordinator of the Young Professional’s Platform for Agricultural Research for Development or YPARD.

YPARD is a vehicle through which young scientists in the CG system – and other stakeholders aged under 40 years, including farmers’ organizations, [...]

A new way to revitalize the CG?

In the spirit of renewal, rumour has it that only participants willing to share their expertise on the dance floor will be invited to future global meetings of the CGIAR…

What is a world café?

The Alliance and Partner Roundtable sessions on Tuesday December 2 make use of the world café concept. A world café is an innovative and simple way to host conversations about important questions. It allows people to move between groups, and for their conversations to link and build on each other, promoting cross-pollination of ideas. As [...]

A young scientist’s perspective

The proposed changes in funding could create greater job security and offer better long-term career opportunities for the CGIAR’s younger scientists, says Nadia Manning-Thomas, IWMI Research scientist and Project Leader of the CG Knowledge Sharing in Research Project.

In addition, the new program-based working structures should help to break down barriers and promote greater networking. At [...]

Welcome from Kathy Sierra and Ren Wang

The CGIAR is entering an exciting period of renewal, prompted by extraordinary events that have disturbing implications for the world’s poor, said Kathy Sierra, CGIAR Chair, in her opening remarks. And it is very appropriate that this revitalization, which will make us much more relevant and effective, is being launched from Mozambique, a country that [...]

An opportunity for greater cohesion

Victoria Henson-Apollonio, Manager of the Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property, believes that the change process will provide an opportunity for much greater cohesion of many different facets of the CG system, among them the issue of IP.

In the past, she says, there has been too much fragmentation. For example, if a private sector organization [...]